Wednesday, January 2, 2013

My Juice Cleanse Diary - Raw Food Guru

Drink juice and eat raw food for three days straight?

As a food blogger, this is absolute T-O-R-T-U-R-E.

I had done a straight juice cleanse before and blogged about it. I lasted two out of the three days and went crazy. Now knowing my limits (they are short), I booked myself into a raw food and juice cleanse combo. Meaning you juice all day and eat a raw dinner at night, which is more my style.

Day One - My Raw Juice Guru cleanse arrived at my door bright & early in a cooler bag with five juices, two elixirs and a raw kale and pear salad. In terms of taste, all the juices went down pretty smooth with the exception of the chlorophyll elixir, which tasted like liquid leaves. Blech. I did however enjoy the aloe vera elixir and I felt full all day and was not craving any food because I knew I had the salad to look forward to.

The salad consisted of kale, pear, hemp seeds, avocado, dates, lemon and olive oil. Because it was made in the morning and sitting in my fridge all day, it was ultra-lemony by the time I ate it. However, I was happy just to be chewing on something again.

Day Two - More juices like beets & carrot and cucumber with apple & kale, all of it organic and fresh-pressed every morning so your body can absorb all the nutrients without them fading away. My raw dinner that night was a zucchini 'pasta' with tomato, mango, cilantro, lemon, pine nuts, basil and olive oil. It smelled amazing and full of flavour. Again, a bit too lemon-y for me but I liked that everything came in separate containers so nothing got soggy. The jar on the right is a cheeseless sauce that you can spoon over - I used just a little bit.

I made a wall of juice so I couldn't get to the other food in my fridge (above)

Day Three - I was almost ready to quit and decided that I would drink three of my juices for breakfast, eat the raw kelp salad for lunch and order sushi for dinner. My body said it was done. It wanted food and I was mentally hungry at this point. I slowly weened myself back onto cooked food and meat - sushi was a good step forward, then I added back more cooked food. I have stuck to eating mainly fish and chicken since then. On the odd occasion will I eat pork and red meat. I drank the rest of my juices over the next couple days and the bottles were all picked up by the end of the week.

My Results - I lost about two pounds on this cleanse about a month ago and I have kept them off so far. The main reason being was that I was using this cleanse as a reset for my long-tern diet and exercise goals. I continued eating quite healthy and clean and continued exercising. The cleanse made me hyper-aware of what I was putting into my body and once I finished, I started a food diary (Livestrong My Plate App) to keep my calories in check and didn't want to eat crazy greasy food right away. Overall, I was really happy with Raw Juice Guru and the food/juice cleanse combo. All the items showed up on time and were picked up the next day. I thought the price was competitive and the food/juices tasted really good.

The Pre-Cleanse - I didn't suffer heavy detox symptons like on my first cleanse because I did a proper pre-cleanse for two days before starting this juice diet. This meant eating an 85% raw diet, so my body could ease into the cleanse. Just make sure you're organized and stock up on a variety of raw foods and meals to put you on the path to success - rice roll wraps were a favourite. The cost of the cleanse is around $100/day. If you're spending that kind of money, you sort of want to do it right and not cheat yourself.

My Juice Cleanse Tips:

1) Drink lots of water. The more hydrated you are, the less likely you'll feel the side-effects.

2) Empty out your fridge & cupboards of any sort of temptation.

3) Clear your social calendar. The less time you spend at parties or events full of booze and snacks, the more likely you'll stick to the cleanse. I have zero to no discipline, so I literally sat at home for the weekend, rented movies, cleaned my house and caught up on work.